Electronic Arts has just released their Q1 of Fiscal Year 2020 report talking about the earnings and achievements that have been made over the last 3 months. In the report EA has talked about how The Sims 4 and Apex Legends are two of the biggest games for them at the moment, as well what their plans are for The Sims 4 in the future.
The earnings call also talked about how The Sims 4 has gotten over 7 million new players during their Free Base Game promotion in May!
In case you don’t know, EA’s Fiscal Year of 2020 has begun in April 2019 and ends in April 2020!
Check out the full transcript down below that’s all about The Sims 4:
Financial Results
- We had a strong start to FY20, bringing rich new experiences to our growing communities for Apex Legends, EA SPORTS, The Sims and more,” said CEO Andrew Wilson.
- During the quarter, The Sims 4, expansion packs and game pack downloads increased 55% year-over-year.
Prepared Remarks
- Our Sims 4 live service also continues to be a rich and rewarding experience for our players, and a strong platform for growth. The Sims 4 continues to be one of the great owned IP success stories of our portfolio, and we’re planning for FY20 to be our biggest year yet of new content. Knowing that, we gave more fans a chance to get into the game through a one-week promotion in May to download the base game for free. Almost 7 million players downloaded the game during that time. In addition to the base game promotion, total expansion and game pack downloads also increased 55% year-over-year in Q1. We launched our seventh expansion pack – Island Living – in late June, and it has already become one of our best-selling packs for The Sims 4. We are fortunate to have an incredibly vibrant and creative Sims community on console, PC and mobile, and we are continuing to double down on this amazing franchise to reach new players and open up exciting new dimensions of The Sims this year.
- Mobile continues to be a growth opportunity for us. Live services are a key aspect of our mobile business, with franchises like Madden Mobile, FIFA Mobile and The Sims continuing to drive strong ongoing engagement.
- Live services net bookings were up 12% year on year, to $504 million, led by Apex Legends and The Sims 4. FIFA Ultimate Team was up 11% year on year at constant currency, 5% at actual exchange rates.
- Finally, as Andrew mentioned, The Sims 4 base game promotion delivered nearly 7 million new installs and we remain on track to have the fifth consecutive year of growth in The Sims 4, following its launch in 2014.
- We continue to expect The Sims 4 and Apex Legends to each deliver net bookings in the $300 million to $400 million range.
Earnings Call Q&A
Blake J. Jorgensen – Electronic Arts Inc. – COO & CFO
Obviously, Sims, we’ve called out that it’s in the same range of $300 million to $400 million. We didn’t do that before, but we wanted to remind people that our business is not based on Apex Legends alone. It’s very important to us, but it’s still a relatively small part of our overall business. And franchises like The Sims have been continually producing that range of revenues because we run them as a live service. And we want to make sure people understand, we have confidence in building a live service around Apex and that will continue to grow over time and we’ll continue to update you as we learn more.
Andrew Wilson – Electronic Arts Inc. – CEO & Director
A community like The Sims has a longer cadence flow. Again, we’re set to have the biggest year in terms of content release this year, and we’ve continued to grow that franchise since launch, but it is not typically a weekly cadence of content because it doesn’t make sense for that community.
The same is true for The Sims, which launched in 2014. We get smarter and better in terms of understanding how to fulfill the motivations and the desires of our players. And we expect that we’ll continue to learn and get better with Apex as well.
Jeffrey A. Cohen – Stephens Inc., Research Division – Analyst
Thanks for the incremental color on The Sims. It feels like that franchise would be one that would do really well on the Nintendo Switch. So I’m curious how you guys determine which platforms you’d bring the game to or games to? And is there any reason why you wouldn’t want to bring that one on there?
Andrew Wilson – Electronic Arts Inc. – CEO & Director
Any time we’re evaluating platform conversations, we are really looking at a couple of things. One, does the game really fit the profile of that platform in terms of the control or the community ecosystem? Two, do we think the community playing on that platform would appreciate the game to go there? Or would they prefer to play it somewhere else? We have a lot of data that would suggest a great many Switch owners also own a PlayStation 4 or an Xbox One or a PC and very often choose to play the games that we make on those platforms even though they have a Switch and they enjoy a lot of great content on the Switch. And so there’s always an evaluation process that goes on a case-by-case basis. And I wouldn’t say that The Sims would never go to the Switch, but I think we’re doing really, really well attracting Sims players. As we said, we did the promotion in the last couple of months and brought in 7 million new Sims players that we expect will engage in that community on a platform that is really tailored to user-generated content, creativity and customization.
